Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6845 mentions, ordered by most recent.
4. Simon Morrison, Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer . My favorite book about Tchaikovsky, engaging but it also covers the music for the music’s sake as well. I liked this sentence from the book jacket: “His life and art were framed by Russian national ambition, and his work was the emanation of an imperial subject: kaleidoscopic, capacious, cosmopolitan.” The book does go relatively light on Tchaikovsky’s um…personal life.
3. Ian Frazier, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough . An excellent, fun, and much-needed book. I liked the parts about the 20th century best. I am still longing for that cost-benefit analysis of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, though. We know the Interstate Highway system passes the cost-benefit test massively, but do all of its constituent parts?
2. Ken McNab, Shake It Up, Baby! The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963 . At the beginning of that year, John and Paul despaired of making it as a rock band, and expected to end up as songwriters for other people, much like Goffin-King at the time. By the end of the year however… This is the story of how that happened. Very well done.
1. Bécquer Seguín, The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain . I liked this book very much, as it gave me extremely useful background on the Spanish fiction I enjoy. It may make less sense to read if you don’t already know the relevant fiction, but in any case a fine work. Imagine, by the way, if America had an equally strong correlation between novelists and Op-Ed columnists.
7. New Cass Sunstein book on campus free speech .
The subtitle is The Origins of Modern Economics, and the author is Benjamin M. Friedman. Here is the book’s home page , you can order here . I very much look forward to reading this one. Here is my earlier CWT with Ben Friedman .
BALL: Gosh, now there’s a question to start with. Where they have most effectively stood up to power — this is a question that I looked at in a book (it must be about 10 years old now) which looked at the response of German physicists during the Nazi era to that regime. I’m afraid my conclusion was, the response was really not very impressive at all.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy . I just heard it is out today, of course I ordered my copy immediately…
4. Pre-order the new Houllebecq .
3. Bioy Casares on Borges, translated into English, at least in part, you can now pre-order . One of the great Spanish-language books, hitherto unavailable in English.
I am a big fan of his forthcoming book We Have Never Been Woke , which I have blurbed. Here is Musa’s home page , do read his bio . Here is Musa on Twitter .
1. This DVD/Blu-Ray of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt is one of the best performances I have seen, ever .
Speaking of Kraftwerk, I also enjoyed the new Simon Reynolds book Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow’s Music Today Reynolds is very good at covering parts of music history that other people ignore.
Jordan Ott’s Back to the Future: How to Reignite American Innovation is exactly that.
Self-recommending is Dana Gioia, Poetry as Enchantment, and Other Essays . The essays on Frost, Auden, and Bradbury are some of my favorites.
6. Michael H. Kater, After the Nazis: The Story of Culture in West Germany . Another excellent work. From this book I took away the (unintended?) conclusion that the German written and cinematic contributions have not aged well, due to excessive (but understandable) preoccupations with Naziism and the Second World War. The greatest German postwar cultural contributions in fact are Richter, Beuys, Kiefer, Baselitz, Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, and Can. The less literal artistic forms dealt with th...
4. Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict . A good look at the festering problems in place before 1948. Among other things, it shows how many of the current arguments and debates have very deep roots, and just how far back the lack of trust goes.
3. Michael Haas, Music of Exile: The Untold Story of the Composers Who Fled Hitler . A detailed, well-organized and captivating look at this story. My conclusion, though, is that the Germanic compositional scene already was starting to reach dead ends in terms of quality and innovation?
2. Daniel Tammet, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum . This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the chapter on Dan Ackroyd especially interesting. Do note that the writing style is autistic, which you may consider either a plus or a minus. And “Are we there yet?”
Capital: Critique of Political Economy, volume 1 . Translated by Paul Reitter, published by Princeton, promises to be an event. Just arrived on my doorstep.